Politicians disagree on responsibility for Senate reform
CBC News | Posted: June 13, 2015 11:00 AM | Last Updated: June 13, 2015
Senators, premiers and party leaders all have different opinions on who should take the lead
The push for change in the Senate is in the air in the wake of Auditor General Michael Ferguson's incendiary report on Senate expense abuses, but a big question remains: what political body is ultimately responsible for reform or abolition?
New Democrat Leader Tom Mulcair is prepared to take that lead, telling Rosemary Barton on CBC Radio's The House that he's making it his obligation to travel the country to meet with premiers to discuss Senate abolition.
"I know this is going to be tough, but I don't shy away from things that are difficult," Mulcair said.
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But he's also not content with mere reform.
"If you read the recent Supreme Court decision, [Senate reforms aren't] possible without constitutional change," he said. "So if I'm going to be going for the unanimity of the provinces, it's not to change the colour of the carpets, it's to get rid of the thing."
Does reform rest with the provinces?
For Conservative Senator Bob Runciman, the least complicated pathway to reform is through the provinces. He admits getting all the provinces on board could be a problem, especially after his recent letter to Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne urging her to lead the reform movement yielded what he said was a disappointing reply from Deputy Premier Deb Matthews.
"Ontario is ready to participate if the federal government decides to lead collaborative pan-Canadian discussions about Senate reform," Matthews' letter read.
"I thought it was a rather bizarre response, to say the least," Runciman told CBC Radio's The House.
"What we have to do is get the provinces engaged in this exercise, but up to this stage, too many of them have been willing to sit on the sidelines," he added.
"We've had nation-builder premiers from across the country who have been prepared to do this and we don't seem to have those same kinds of folks in office today."
Canada 'way beyond' Senate
One premier who is prepared to act is Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall.
He's not content with mere reform though; in a separate interview with Rosemary Barton on The House, Wall said it would be easier to just get rid of the Senate.
"I would argue that as tough as abolishing would be, it might even be harder to reform it in the proper way because if we just simply start electing senators, we couldn't support that in the West," he said.
"It would make permanent what we think is an imbalance in terms of the number of seats in the Senate for Western Canada."
Besides Wall, only one other premier has come out and supported the idea of abolition: Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger.
Wall initially said he wouldn't actively campaign for abolition, but he told Barton that he is going to bring it up at the annual premiers meeting this July in St. John's.
"We're going to encourage other premiers to consider the position...everyone knows our position," he said.
"We just hope others come to the same realization."
Wall is insistent that the country would function just fine without its senators, an archaic model he says Canada should be way beyond in 2015.
"I can't think of any examples where people of the province of Saskatchewan or other Western provinces would say, 'well, thank goodness we have the Senate to save us.'"
Munson calls for reform from within the Red Chamber
Ontario Liberal Senator Jim Munson doesn't think action on reform should come from the provinces.
"I think we have to look in the mirror ourselves," he said on The House.
"I think (the provinces) have to be partners in the process, but we have to take the lead. I think that we, on the inside, have to do this ourselves.We have to leave our partisan ideas at the door of the Senate, sit down, talk about term limits, talk about other issues and move motions and get that debate going."
Listen to the full interviews with Senator Jim Munson, Senator Bob Runciman, Premier Brad Wall and NDP Leader Tom Mulcair on The House here.